Jon Fosse

Facts

Jon Fosse

© Nobel Prize Outreach. Photo: Clément Morin

Jon Fosse
The Nobel Prize in Literature 2023

Born: 29 September 1959, Haugesund, Norway

Residence at the time of the award: Norway; Austria

Prize motivation: “for his innovative plays and prose which give voice to the unsayable”

Language: Norwegian Nynorsk

Prize share: 1/1

Work

Jon Fosse's immense œuvre written in Nynorsk consists of a wealth of plays, novels, poetry collections, essays, children’s books and translations. In his radical reduction of language and dramatic action, he expresses the most powerful human emotions of anxiety and powerlessness in the simplest everyday terms. It is through this ability to evoke man’s loss of orientation, that he is a major innovator in contemporary theatre. Despite Fosse's negative outlook, there is great warmth and humour in his work, and a naïve vulnerability to his stark images of human experience.

To cite this section
MLA style: Jon Fosse – Facts – 2023. NobelPrize.org. Nobel Prize Outreach AB 2024. Wed. 11 Dec 2024. <https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/literature/2023/fosse/facts/>

Back to top Back To Top Takes users back to the top of the page

Book tips

Nobel Prize in Literature 2023

Want to get started with 2023 literature laureate Jon Fosse, but don’t know which book to pick up first? Here, Anders Olsson, Chairman of the The Nobel Committee for Literature gives his recommendations.

Books by Jon Fosse

Photo: Claire Eriksson. © Nobel Prize Outreach

Nobel Prizes and laureates

Six prizes were awarded for achievements that have conferred the greatest benefit to humankind. The 12 laureates' work and discoveries range from proteins' structures and machine learning to fighting for a world free of nuclear weapons.

See them all presented here.

Illustration

Explore prizes and laureates

Look for popular awards and laureates in different fields, and discover the history of the Nobel Prize.